2007-03-02 10:37:51 · 5 answers · asked by dvjr777 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Security
Cookies are files on your computer to identify or set personal features when browsing. For example, cookies can be used identify your browsing session seperate from other users at the same site,referred as sessional cookies. Other types of cookies can store your preferances for a website layout or password if you wish to visit a site frequently without retyping the password in.
2007-03-02 10:42:15 · answer #1 · answered by Elliot K 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Cookies
Cookies are actually harmless text files that certain web sites will place onto the hard drive of your computer. Your Internet Browser will then load the information into memory while you are visiting their site. The Cookie itself, actually takes up very little space and acts as an identification card for the visiting site. You can compare this to visiting your favorite restaurant where your food server will usually remember certain aspects of how you like your food prepared and what you usually order. This information would obviously be based upon his familiarity of your prior visits. Well Cookies actually act in a similar manner and do not contain viruses as a virus must be executable file. Let us look at some of the ways that Cookies act as an identification card.
Why Sites Use Cookies?
There are numerous reasons why websites would want to use cookies. These range from statistical purposes, such as how many visitors came to the site. This can be further broken down into are they new visitors or actually repeating visitors and how often do they visit. The Website would actually create a unique id for each visitor and store this information into a database.
Cookies can be used to store your personal preferences, referred to as customizations, that you set while navigating their site. For instance, if you visit Yahoo.com, you can sign in to create your very own personal yahoo page where you can customize it according to your news and weather preferences after providing your zip code. You can even change the color of the page layout as well.
Online Shopping sites can use cookies to keep track of items that you add to their shopping carts and quick checkout options. The cookie will keep track of every item that you add to the shopping cart while you continue to browse through different pages or even entirely different sections of their site. Every item you add is stored within the Web site’s database along with a unique ID value that has been assigned to you. Therefore, when you select the check out option, the site automatically knows what items are in your cart by retrieving those selections from its database. This is why sites such as Amazon or eBay will prompt you to enable cookies in case you have disabled them.
Cookies also provide web designers and programmers with a quick and convenient method of keeping their site content fresh and up to date according to the interests of their users. Modern web servers use Cookies for back-end interaction as well, allowing them to securely store any personal data that the user has entered within a site. Therefore, on return visits the user now only has to enter partial information to access their account and purchases can be made quicker as their payment information is on file regarding their previous purchases.
In closing, as Cookies are actually small text files, they really can not damage your computer system or any files on your hard drive. Once again, they cannot transmit viruses as viruses are executable in nature. Some users may just not want to be tracked and this is one of the primary reasons why many people just disable accepting cookies.
2007-03-02 18:44:49 · answer #2 · answered by G 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Cookies (in laymans terms) are specific files that your internet browser keep. Whether it's personal info on yourself or personal settings that you have created in a web site. For example, My Yahoo has a cookie that keeps your settings so that you won't have to reset them every time you log in.
2007-03-02 18:43:03 · answer #3 · answered by lickthisup69 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
omg cookies is a program in windows that you need to use for certain things to work it is located in your browser somewhere depending on the type of browser you have.
2007-03-02 18:45:14 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
its a way of your computer & their computer talking to each other in very simple terms
2007-03-02 18:42:09 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋